


What Stares Back

by Rhinozilla



Category: Jak and Daxter
Genre: Gen, My first foray into this fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 15:05:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16286837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinozilla/pseuds/Rhinozilla
Summary: Maia Acheron can feel the way the dark eco is changing her. Suddenly, she can see it too. Pre-Jak & Daxter. Written for DarkWarriorProject's JnD Horror Week over on Tumblr. Day 1: Painful Transformation.





	What Stares Back

The air in her quarters was thick with an itchy stillness as the night stretched into the pre-dawn hours. Maia Acheron lay in her bed, staring at where she knew her ceiling was, seeing nothing. Without any source of light, she could discern no difference between her eyes being open and closed. It was like that every night, and every night, it unnerved the primitive subconscious part of her that had always been afraid of the dark. That childish ignorance of staring into the dark and feeling that the dark was staring back.

On this particular night, that sense of unease had been replaced with something else. It wasn’t…comfort…but…she couldn’t think of the correct word.

Her skin was burning on the left side of her face…the entire left side of her body, which sounded accurate. She had been on the right side of the Precursor machine when they had conducted the experiment yesterday.

It had been so beautiful…

Her left eye burned, and she grimaced, sitting up in bed and pushing the heel of her hand against her eye as though to push away the inflammation. It worked to a small degree, and she huffed, kicking away the bedsheets and swinging her legs off the side of the mattress.

The cool wood grain of the floor tugged at her bare feet, and she gingerly transferred her weight forward until she was standing. The complete darkness of her bed chamber gave her a sense of vertigo, but it felt like her vision was adjusting to it…the left side of her vision anyway.

Too tired and disoriented to evaluate this development, she made a mental log to think about it later, making her way blindly to where she knew the entryway to her personal washroom was. She knew she was there when the wood floor transitioned into uneven stone, and the leather curtain that served as a door brushed against her face. She swatted it away and cringed at the dull glow of blue eco in the belly of the lamp by the wash basin. Even that much light, muted by the dark tint of the lamp glass, made her eye burn worse, and she bit her lip, reaching out and flipping the switch to turn on the lamp before she could talk herself out of it.

For the briefest moment, between the crackle of the lamp illuminating the wash room and her eyes adjusting to the light, Maia did not recognize her own reflection in the amber resin mirror on the wall. So much so that she jumped back and lifted one defensive forearm. Then her brain caught up with her actions, and she growled at herself in embarrassment, lowering her arm and leaning over the wash basin to stare at her reflection.

The left side of her face looked like a shadow, like someone had drained all of the color out of that side. It met the brown, tanned skin of her right side in swirling, forked edges, like a map where the sea meets land. The blue hue of the lamp made even her unaffected skin look unnaturally pale, and it brought out the yellow of her left eye. While her right looked normal, the natural ring of brown around the pupil of her left eye had been stained the same yellow as the surrounding sclera, making her left eye look constricted and wild in comparison.

The blond hair framing her face had dulled to a silvery grey from the roots, and the blond had bled away for nearly six inches away from her scalp before returning to normal. Even her lips, or half of them, were so grey that they were almost blue…like a corpse…

Panic flooded her belly with heat, and she scrambled for the vial of green eco that she kept stored in the basket on the other side of the wash basin. The vibrant green color filled her with an unexpected bolt of revulsion, and her hand withdrew with a visceral jerk that startled her.

_Break it…Weak…You don’t need it…You have what you need…Hurl it against the wall…_

“Stop…” she hissed aloud, curling her left arm to her chest.

She drew two quick breaths before forcing her breathing to slow. She inhaled deeply, leaning her hip against the basin. She held the air in for a five count before slowing releasing it. As the boiling revulsion dissipated, she gave her head a recalibrating shake and looked again at the vial.

She and Gol had been using the green eco to fend off the more painful side effects of prolonged exposure to dark eco. Direct contact burns, abrasions from the electric currents that leapt out of the ooze when introduced to organic matter, residual skin inflammation from proximity to dark eco transmutations: the green eco had always eased the discomfort from the pain.

They knew it was a temporary solution. Their bodies were still acclimating to this kind of exposure to dark eco. Soon, they would be free from this infuriating addiction to green eco and the soft warmth that it used to cocoon their kind. Already, so much was becoming more clear thanks to the dark eco, the forbidden eco, the power that all the other sages said could not be controlled.

Cowards.

Flexing her jaw, she used her right hand to pick up the vial, hating herself for the tremble in her fingers as she uncorked it. There wasn’t enough of the substance to wipe down the entire left half of her body, but she could get rid of the corpse-like grey of her face and neck. The other scholars at the Citadel were already treating her and her brother like pariahs; there was no need to give them further evidence that their fears might be founded.

No, they weren’t founded. The others were all fools. They were weak, pathetic, complacent imbeciles…content to study the already well-studied primary forms of eco. No vision. No ambition. They scuttled around the libraries with their scrolls, reinventing the wheel and patting themselves on the back for it. They had the gall to ostracize the Acherons for daring to reach for something more.

Maia took two violent puffs of air and then splashed the green eco against her face. She wasn’t sure if the hiss came from her throat or from the sizzle of the eco against her infected skin. It felt like layers of her face were melting away, and she pawed both hands at the left side of her face, aggressively spreading the green eco across her forehead, down her cheek, along her jawline, and back toward her ear. She rubbed it up to the roots of her hair and as far down her neck as it would go before running dry.

The green eco leeched into her skin, destabilizing the dark eco that had lodged itself into her cells, pushing it out through her pores, where it dissolved into purple smoke when it met the open air. The burning in her left eye eased first, and she leaned heavily against her wash basin as the relief threatened to buckle her knees.

The effect of the eco faded, and she waved at the air, wafting away the remains of the expelled dark eco mist. She coughed and forced her hands to stop trembling again. Ugh, it was getting worse. The pain from the green eco treatments was intensifying at a commensurate rate to the way the pain from the dark eco exposure was easing day by day. Oh, if only this would pass more quickly.

She tossed the empty vial aside without thinking, only to cringe when it shattered against the stone floor. Angrily, she grabbed the woven basket on the basin counter and hurled it across the room. The basket bowed on impact with the wall and dumped its contents on the floor. The chaotic clattering sound settled her nerves, and she lowered her hunched shoulders.

The resin mirror caught the periphery of her vision, and she flinched. She chewed on her lower lip and turned to look at the mirror again. The reflection that looked back at her was far more symmetrical this time. Both eyes with twin brown irises looked back at her, watery with pain from the treatment and wide with…fear?

Her lip curled, and she felt that familiar prickle of revulsion at the normal flesh tone of her face. Perfect, now she looked just like all the other cowards who buried their noses in the mundane and unimaginative.

Gol had stopped using the green eco treatments last week, he’d told her. She could hear the effect it was having on his breathing, could see the ashy tone of his skin and the yellowing of his eyes…He said that it didn’t hurt anymore, but he never had been able lie to her. He was trying to just muscle through it, maybe he thought it would be easier that way: frontload all of the suffering.

She snorted and took a step back from the mirror, looking at the reflection of her grey left arm. After a brief pause, she reached up and pushed aside the shoulder strap of her night shirt, finding the seam where the grey met the tan. She ran her finger over the vertical line as it bisected her collar bone. Where earlier her left side had felt like it was burning, now her right side felt chilly in the open air.

Lifting her shirt revealed the same wandering line where grey met tan down her belly, and from what she could see from twisting around, it was the same story for her back. Her leg had turned as well, and although she wasn’t wearing any nail polish, the beds of her toenails looked darker. She inspected her fingernails to find the residual green eco had changed the palm of her hand back to its natural shade, but the back of her hand remained a tinted grey.

Avoiding the mirror now, she went and picked up the contents of the thrown basket, shoving it back to the counter beside the water basin. She rolled her neck and felt it pop a few times, rotating her shoulders for the same effect. She had no idea what time it was, but she was too awake to go back to bed.

The communicator on her desk blipped, and she involuntarily stepped out of the wash room and reached for it. The electronic light from the little device cut away the darkness in the room, and that same little voice from before insisted that she throw it against the wall.

Samos was calling.

That old man was as much a coward as the other sages and scholars, although he had been more persistent than the others in trying to dissuade Maia and her brother to pursue their study of dark eco. It was a persistence that wasn’t as laden with fear as the others, and his worries and hum-hawing seemed instead to carry a heavier weight. Where the others might fear what dark eco could do, Samos almost gave the air of knowing the answer and being determined not to let anyone else find out.

But the green sage had been like that since Maia had met him. So above them all and knowing so much better than all of them…He was a sage of green eco, the most plentiful and widely utilized eco in their world. What did he know of risk?

This was the third time that he had tried to call her in a week. To ignore him this third time would arouse more suspicion.

Suspicion of what? Their study of dark eco was no secret. They were not hiding anything.

_Let the old fool choke on his anecdotes of caution…His kind will not survive the new world._

She snarled and grabbed up the communicator, flicking on the larger blue eco lamp in her chambers. At the last second, she grabbed a scarf off the bedpost, wrapping it around her neck to cover the grey line down her throat.

“What.” It came out as a bark instead of a greeting, but Maia didn’t correct her tone, staring at the screen.

Samos’s face filled the box, staring back at her. His voice had same harsh tone matching hers but not matching the soft worry lines on his face.

“Maia, what is going on up there? I hear that you and Gol had cut off all communications with the other sages. Now I hear that you are also cutting off contact with the other scholars at the Citadel? If you two are looking to destroy yourselves, then you are on the fast track!”

“They cannot tell us anything worth knowing. Your rules for eco do not apply here,” she growled.

“You are still studying dark eco!” Samos snapped.

She stopped herself from flinching and redirected that emotion into anger. “If not us, then whom? You would wallow in ignorance instead of unlocking the most powerful substance on the planet!”

“You don’t know what you’re tampering with!”

“And you do?!”

“Maia…” Samo’s voice faltered. “Dark eco is pure chaos. It will drive you both mad if you continue to expose yourselves to it…if it hasn’t started to already!”

“All that dark eco has driven us to is the certainty that it is an underutilized resource, capable of reshaping the way that we look at the world.”

“There is nothing wrong with the way we look at the world now!”

“Says the sage of the most worshipped form of eco!” she roared. “You are just threatened by the idea of someone else becoming more powerful, more revered, and more in tune with the Precursors…or didn’t you know that much of the Precursor technology that we have discovered is fueled by dark eco?!”

“Stop this!” Samos bellowed back. “Listen to yourself! It is already poisoning your mind. Reshaping the world? Power? Dark eco powered Precursor technology? This isn’t you speaking.”

_Let me show you what dark eco can do…We have only scratched the surface…You and yours have no idea what power is…not yet…_

“Stay on your little island, Samos,” she hissed. “Bury your head in that sand you love so much…but stay out of our way.”

She cut off his retort by ending the call. She flipped the device over and popped off the back, yanking out the power source and watching the light on the buttons fade to black. She tossed both components on her bed and hunched her shoulders, stalking over to her wardrobe and digging out a pair of brown pants and a faded orange crop top.

She tossed the scarf aside and changed into her clothes for the day. She didn’t care what time it was, suddenly her veins were full of acid and burning to go resume their research.

As she tied her hair back, by habit she moved to stand in front of the full length mirror in the corner of the room. The V neck of her shirt cut lower than she normally wore, but something about today made her find the look appealing. The grey of her skin had pushed past the halfway point on her chest, and she wanted to draw attention to that fact.

The vial in the wash room had been her last supply of green eco, so on some level the decision had already been made for her. That was the last of it. No more green eco treatments. Soon the grey would spread until it was uniform across her entire body.

_Good…yes…_

She shoved down the last vestiges of that old childish fear. The only thing staring back at her out of the darkness was her own reflection in the mirror…She and Gol had this under control.

Right?

_Right._

Drilling that thought to the forefront of her mind, she turned and marched out of her quarters, down the winding hallway to the lab. She had work to do.


End file.
